Over the past several years, I’ve written numerous articles exploring the parallel nature of music and photography — and how the creative techniques I apply to one are often relevant to the other.

Distilled to the utmost purity, photography is simply a way to trigger an emotional response through visual stimulation, while music works through aural excitation. But curiously, in spite of this similarity, the expectations an audience places upon photographers and musicians couldn’t be more different.

To the general public, a good photograph is a good photograph — regardless of the photographer’s physical characteristics, personality, dress, manner or age. To that same public however, a good song is not just a good song — it’s an amalgamation of the musician’s appearance, personal style and aura.

No matter how good a musician is, the bulk of their audience likely comprises a single generation — with the musician’s relevance and popularity dictated by how closely they personify that generation’s definition of “cool.” A cult of personality surrounds musicians, and a listener’s emotional response to the actual music is inevitably filtered and distorted by their perception of the musician who performs it.

I believe this phenomenon occurs because sight is our dominant sense. Whatever we see influences whatever we hear, taste, feel or smell. Anything created to engage one of the non-sight senses is inevitably impacted substantially by what one sees while experiencing it. But if you create something (like photography) that directly targets someone’s visual sense, then any superfluous visual information matters little in comparison.

When we listen to music, we’re often engaged in some other activity — reading, writing, dining, socializing, etc. With music, there is ample sensory headroom remaining for additional stimuli, which means our enjoyment of it can be impacted substantially by our environment. For example, when people we admire engage with a particular type of music, we often choose to listen to the same music — meaning we allow far more than an auditory sense to dictate our listening choices. This “sensory headroom” is also one of the reasons people enjoy live music — it adds a visual element in which the appearance of the musician and the staging of the concert all filter and alter one’s involvement with the music. In contrast, when was the last time you bought a ticket to watch an artist paint a picture?

One of the ways musicians have maintained a visual connection with their audiences is through their choice of instrument. There are thousands of different musical instruments, the workings of which are often a mystery to the majority of people. Instruments have a certain mystique — even amongst other musicians. A trumpet virtuoso will likely become a ham-handed buffoon when handed a viola — yet both instruments can be used to play the identical tune. This plethora of instruments enables each musician to maintain a level of visual exclusivity that separates him or her from other musicians, and from the general public. If we watch someone extract fabulous sounds from an instrument that we, personally, have no idea how to play, it creates a certain allure — an element of “cool.”

Contrast this to photography. Sure, there are thousands of different camera models, but essentially they’re all minor variations of the same thing — a box with a lens and a button. Once you’ve taken a photo yourself, there’s nothing particularly exciting about watching someone else take a photo. Richard Avedon pushed a button, just like Henri Cartier-Bresson did, and just like Daido Moriyama does. Stylistically, their photos couldn’t be more different. But they all used essentially the same tool to create them. The fact one person’s tool was a medium format camera, another’s was a Leica rangefinder, and the third shoots with compact cameras makes no real difference. It’s tantamount to trying to draw a distinction between a pianist that plays a Steinway and one who plays a Yamaha — the subtle differences may impact the musician, but to the audience these instruments are one-and-the-same.

I never thought to dissect this distinction between the enjoyment of photography and the enjoyment of music until about a month ago, when I made my quasi-annual pilgrimage to the musical instrument and recording trade show, called NAMM. Previously, I had a much more knuckle-dragging, neanderthal-ish take on why good photography could stand alone, while music appreciation was inextricably tied to celebrity, trends and generational hipness. Photography fans, I postulated, were simply more “evolved.”

The fact that Robert Frank’s seminal 1959 album of photos (The Americans) remains one of the best selling photography monographs today is testament that good photography transcends generational cool. In contrast, how many youngsters seek out Charles Mingus’ equally-seminal 1959 album of music (Mingus Ah Um)? If you’re a young fan of modern photographers (regardless of genre) and you have a modest collection of monographs, you’ve probably got a copy of The Americans on your shelf. But if you’re a fan of Taylor Swift, Drake or Beyonce, you probably don’t have a copy of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on your iPhone.

So what happened at this years’ NAMM show? What transformed my barbaric “music fans are shallower” presumption into such cognitive enlightenment? Simple. I witnessed a performance that, based on my old theory, would have required me to admit that I, too, am shallow. And there’s no way I could let that happen…

NAMM attracts around 2000 exhibitors who display their musical instrument wares to over 100,000 attendees. Consequently, I see all manner of musicians playing all manner of instruments — cellos, trumpets, drums, organs, guitars, pianos, synthesizers, oboes, kotos, accordions, dulcimers, pipas, sitars, etc. Every one of these people seems eminently “cool” to me because, frankly, it’s cool to watch someone interact so expressively with objects of such exotic purpose.

But everything changed when I attended a lecture about using smart phones and tablets as musical instruments. It featured a performance by a world-renowned virtuoso keyboardist, jamming away on his iPad. Watching him play, I was certain I could never manage to articulate that iPad app with the dexterity, precision and feeling that he did. By definition, this should have made his performance seem “cool.” Yet it was one of the dullest and most uninspiring musical recitals I’d ever seen. Why? Because it was played on an iPad.

Watching someone play an iPad is visually no different than watching someone play Angry Birds. Or type a tweet. Or move funds between bank accounts. The end result may sound fantastic, but it’s a tedious thing to witness. I had no more interest in watching a virtuoso play an iPad instrument than I would have watching Josef Koudelka take a photo… and I dearly love Koudelka’s photos!

Technically, this should have thrilled me. A milestone had been reached! Finally, here was a case of music being produced solely for music’s sake! The point of a Koudelka photo isn’t to watch Koudelka take the photo — it’s to savour the end result. So shouldn’t the point of a musical performance be the music itself, and not the visual act of seeing it performed? Apparently not. Because I simply could not engage with it. And the reason I couldn’t was because of the way in which the music was being performed.

Tablets and smart phones are ridiculously common place. They are not purpose-built devices; they’re platforms. I’ve used one. You’ve used one. Roughly 7 billion of us own one or the other, or both. Those of us who don’t have likely witnessed scores of people who do. These are not objects of mystery, and the odds are good that you’ve (literally) bumped into someone using one on the street within the past 24 hours.

What do all these people do on all these devices? Who cares?! The point is, we all know that whatever we do on our devices, we do it because it’s easier and more convenient than doing it some other way. And so, when we see someone swipe out a musical performance on an iPad, it gives the illusion that this person is taking the easy way out — that they’re shortcutting the musical creation process. Would any of us want to go see Yo Yo Ma play if he was dragging his finger around on a cello app, as opposed to playing a real cello? Probably not. Even if he could obtain the same sonic result with the app, there’s something fundamentally uncool about it — as if Yo Yo Ma was no longer “special,” because he’s using the same device you just used to watch cat videos on YouTube.

And therein lies the problem. If you stick daggers into your iPad like Keith Emerson did with the keys on his organ, it’s not going to scream out in distorted anguish and bring 10,000 fans to their feet. It’s just going to quit working. You can’t play it with your teeth like Jimi Hendrix played guitar. You can’t even close your eyes and make dreamy “jam faces” while you play, because there’s no tactile feel to an iPad’s glass screen, meaning you need to constantly watch yourself play it.

So it was here, in this small conference room on the second floor of the Anaheim Convention Center, that I came to realize exactly how and why the appreciation of music can not exist wholly within the music itself.

And I further realized, having returned to writing music after my photography-centric hiatus, that it won’t be enough to simply stick my music up on the internet, and let it stand on its own merit. Music needs to be propped up in ways that photography doesn’t. If I want people to engage with my music to the same extent that they engage with my photography, I’m going to have to do more than just post it on the internet. I’m going to have to make the experience of listening to it seem cool. And somehow, I’m also going to have to make myself seem cool.

Alas, though I have now defined the task before me, I haven’t a clue how to approach its resolution. So if anyone knows how to make a middle-age man who plays a giant electromechanical instrument that looks remarkably like a 1940s telephone switchboard look “cool,” I’m all ears.

“Death of the Cool” was photographed with a Leica IIIc and a Voigtlander 25mm f/4 Snapshot-Skopar lens on Tri-X at ISO 400, which I developed in Rodinal 1:50.

“Symbolism” and “The New Cool?” were both shot on a Leica M Monochrom (Type 246); the first employing a Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Nokton lens, and the second a Leica f/2 Summicron (version 4).

The title is obviously (to me anyway) a reference to Miles Davis’ 1957 album, “Birth of the Cool.” That which was born must eventually die…

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Comments

Having downloaded a few “musical creation applications” (MCAs) onto my iPad recently, I now feel compelled to try to play them with my teeth. Thanks for that.

My 15 minutes of fame awaits!

Good luck with that whole “looking cool” thing. I am far too old to worry about it much anymore, and would rather spend my time “feeling cool” and doing “cool things”. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Wait a minute… didn’t you once play with Moe Tucker? If so, then I posit that not only have you already HAD your 15 minutes of fame, but that Moe’s direct link to the very progenitor of the “15 minutes” concept is worth at least an hour of the watered down, commonplace “fame” enjoyed by others.

Interesting insight. It goes some way to explaining why I never buy anything ‘recorded live’, as it always sounds terrible compared to the studio version. (An exception might be if it was a video recording – which rather supports your point.) Although the audience that was present seems in most cases to have been deliriously happy.

As a thought experiment imagine if Yo Yo Ma played on stage, a perfect recording of himself playing a piece by Bach, while all the time ‘playing’ a soundless cello. Theoretically, that would be the best of both techniques, but the audience would no doubt demand their money back claiming that they had been cheated! In a performance there must be an element of risk, and we want to see the artist deal effectively with it. If you want to promote your music career, it looks like you will need to get out and perform!

Your thought experiment opens up a whole new avenue for discussion — particularly since so many modern acts rely heavily on backing tracks and lip-synced vocals, making it a now accepted practice. I suspect this is because the audience knows they’re there for the visual spectacle, and don’t want to be distracted by a sub-par auditory experience or alternative rendition.

Your “element of risk” observation is interesting, but one look at what happened to Mariah Carey’s New Years Eve performance illustrates that a flubbed backing track error is far worse than a flubbed note. Back in the early 1980’s, I remember seeing bands like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark attempt to perform against time synched analog sequencers and reel-to-reel tapes. Half the show was spent watching the band wait around whilst technicians worked through technical problems. Such “pre recorded” performances were actually the ultimate high risk endeavours, yet they were rather dull on the visual front.

Going back to your Yo Yo Ma example, I think Laurie Anderson provided the ultimate solution for a string-instrumentalist performing with a backing track. Her violin contained a magnetic recording head, and her violin “bow” was strung with a strip of recording tape. She could then “play” that strip of tape by dragging it across the violin — varying speed, pitch and direction. When I first saw her do this in the early 1980’s, I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen… So if Laurie Anderson could solve the “problem” of making backing tracks seem interesting, perhaps the iPad just needs the right creative practitioner to come along?

It’s a photo that does, I think, say something about the current state of humanity (though such photos are ridiculously easy to take given that very state). I do wonder, though, just how many of those folks were rocking’ out on a musical instrument app?

Heck, even https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT8ix3ZNlLM is cool. Not only the presentation, but also the dedication with which that young guy plus some friends take music of just video games and make them sound like jazz standards. You might call Carlos (the owner of that channel) simply a “bedroom producer”, but he does this since some 7+ years and made it to Berklee College of Music by now. If that isn’t a cool thing then I don’t know.

Me, I’m 60 and not concerned that much about my own appearance anymore, neither when working on music nor in photography. Couldn’t make it to NAMM which is just too far away, but maybe I can visit the upcoming Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. Let’s see. But I’ll definitely go to the Snarky Puppy concert end of May around here, and not just to see them. Just love their groove.

Thanks for checking in with the video links — though I must admit that I’m not 100% certain why you sent them. 🙂

I suspect you thought my “death of the cool” comment applied to all modern music — which it most definitely doesn’t. There are tens of thousands of cool new musicians making hundreds of thousands of cool new tunes (as your videos indicate). My “death of the cool” barb was meant specifically for music performed on iPads. And even then, I’m not saying I think iPad music is bad, or that people who play iPads aren’t “real” musicians (they most certainly are). All I’m saying is that the visual act of watching someone perform on an iPad is, for me, utterly “uncool.” But then, as I mentioned in the article, I’m mostly creating music on a big modular synthesizer, so it’s not like I’m doing something substantially cooler. But one thing that playing a giant switchboard does have going for it, unlike the iPad, is that it definitely doesn’t look like I’m taking a “shortcut” to sound creation, and it definitely fulfills the “exotic and mysterious” requirement.

Enjoy the Snarky Puppy show, and thanks for taking the time and effort to comment!

Hmja, maybe I’ve got you wrong. Certainly watching Miles is still cool, or Thelonius Monk, or Charles Mingus and the likes.

Thought you’d want to hear some advice, or see examples on how to look cool when presenting your music, therefore these examples.

What they all have in common is certainly talent, ideas, and a proper dose of commitment – that Jasmine ran a Youtube channel since she was 10, and now she’s a world-class act and has a deal with a record company. Snarky Puppy was founded by a bass player who thought he’d not be good enough for all the bands in his North-Texan university – and now they’re producing some of the best stuff I’ve ever heard. And that Carlos? He pumps out a video like the one I’ve linked to each week, with a deadline of 9:30am each Saturday or so. And for that short amount of time you must admit that he’s doing it very good.

I agree about the iPad thing – that’s certainly not cool. Sorry that I’ve missed that part.

About that Jazz Night in America: I guess when Christian McBride starts reporting about you and your music, you must have achieved something. Until then, try to make advantage of your photographic skills when presenting your music together with some images, or even a short film… and good luck!

Hmmm… fedora. What’s funny is that I frequently wear one when I go out on long photo walks. I chose the look because I figured it was so UNcool that people on the streets would see me as a dorky “non-person,” and immediately dismiss any fears over that camera in my hand. To think it could actually be used as a symbol of “cool” is an interesting turn of events…

Anyway, I don’t think playing music on a smartphone is dull – maybe it’s because I have even problems with clapping to the rhythm (why there are so many h ? – we call it rytm:). Yes, maybe it’s not so impressive as playing on a comb or saw but quite interesting too.

Thanks for the video. Though I gotta say, hair or no hair, this just exudes my kind of cool — theatre organ and Minimoog! What a perfect combination! Alas, in regards to the second paragraph, I’m going to stick by my assertion that both the comb player and the saw player would be infinitely more interesting to watch than the iPad player…

Your mention of the saw made me think of a pointless little story: Back in the 1990’s, when doing “unplugged” concerts was all the rage, I had this idea of doing an “Unplugged: Theremin” concert. Of course, you can’t actually play a theremin if it’s unplugged, so my plan was to use a saw to play the theremin part. For those who don’t know what a theremin is:

Sadly, I quickly realized my plan had several flaws: First, I’d have to learn to play the saw; and second, I doubt enough people would have appreciated the joke to have attended such a concert.

Ha, you see! (Even you didn’t see it at first.) Look at the hair of Mrs Rockmore (and compare it with the flat- even if non-flat – perm of that other lady at the piano). You can be a master musician but a good coiffure launches you into space where you become a real star.

Interesting standpoints and a great shot – all the more poignant that it was made with a Leica IIIc.

I would only add that the reason why watching people perform on instruments concerns the skill involved, not just the risk!

If a performer has studied years and years to achive something great, it means much more to me than playing on an iPad – however good the music produced by the iPad might sound. There is little point in watching someone play an instrument that you could play as well yourself with no training.

Seeing a skilled performer taking risks to communicate with me will always remain a mesmerizing experience.

I completely agree that art is about cultivating an emotional response, and I am struck by your observation that presenting the commonplace is unlikely to do stimulate emotions. It is so obvious as to fly under the radar: ordinary things do not stimulate emotions, and so do not become art, because otherwise everything would be an emotional stimulus and we’d all be emotional wrecks. (Dadaism is art precisely because it is “anti-art” that plays emotionally on the layered interpretations of an art-sophisticated audience.) The observation that ordinary is not artistic due to individual sensitivity thresholds feeds well into my stereotype that artists are generally emotional wrecks — and that it is that very emotional (hyper)sensitivity that allows us to perceive the boundaries of stimuli and use them to create things that stimulate emotions among those whose minds are more normal. So my confirmation bias likes this observation.

But I disagree that visual stimulus or association with “cool” is necessary. Certainly, these are ready pathways to emotions; my point is that “commonly employed for a purpose” does not mean “required to achieve purpose.” Instead, I propose that most emotional response is created though facsimile experiences. It is easy to create a fake relationship with a person by making a photographic portrait of them; that relationship is stronger if the audience has an inherent desire to relate to the subject of the portrait, such as if the subject is known personally to the viewer or if the subject is sexually or socially desirable. A photograph can also create a sense of experience in the audience if the image creates a sense of relatable anticipation, such as a photograph of an ordinary person about to step into the middle of a puddle or an extraordinary athlete about to perform a majestic feat (or suffer an astounding setback). Because it is visual, our brains quickly jump the uncanny valley of the synthetic image and interpret the art as though it were real, and experience the scene, and have an emotional reaction to that experience.

Consider the popularity of the human subject in photography. Wait, no: try the reverse. How many photographs that do not include human subjects are able to achieve recognition? How many photographers are able to build respected bodies of work when such scenes are their subject matter of choice? (Very, very few.) I believe it is the experience of fake relationship with other humans that makes most photography popular, not the visual stimulus.

And I think the same thing happens in music — that perceived relationships with other people drive popularity — but to a different extent. This is in contrast with what I think of as “pure music,” which the audience enjoys by emotionally and intellectually participating in the music as it unfolds, anticipating things to come and delighting when they are right about what happens, and contrasting what actually happens with their expectations when their expectations are unmet. Pure music has a dedicated but small audience, likely because most people haven’t found the pleasures of dedicating that much effort to listening to music. Instead, most music is supplemented by, or supplemental to, other stimuli. Whether commuting or romancing, attending a spectacle of a concert or preparing to perform one, most music is successful in its ability to stimulate experience through association. And, in many (most?) cases of popular music, those associations overwhelm any musical qualities that the auditory experience has to offer. An implied association of social independence and sexual maturity is highly appealing to young audiences; explicit associations with power and influence are popular among the disenfranchised; and reaffirmations of identity are valued among those whose cultural standing is dwindling. These associations are simply tied to the musician(s) involved, and are thereby strengthened when they’re actually in the same room as the audience.

Associating music performance with an commonplace electronic device just kills the desired emotional association. Tablets point in all directions, and so point to nothing. A dedicated musical instrument points to that music. Performing in an iPad will require a lot of other things to overcome that generic experience, just like a lot of pompous art “criticism” was required to make Dadaism successful.

So. My response to how to make a middle-aged guy playing a 1940’s switchboard appealing: find other things that align with the emotions that drive your music and associate them with your persona and performances. Sounds hard, but I think a lot of middle-aged guys think that anyone who doesn’t hate their job is inherently cool, and the only challenge is to turn that into something positive — an association with something affirmative (even if that affirmation is active destruction of something else) — rather than a void or vacancy, which is precisely what most people listen to music to fill. Take all of those associations that you can bundle together and present them as a single thing.

That said, I’m not in any position to offer advice. (I don’t take photos of people. People don’t interest me as static subjects, and in turn most of my photos don’t interest most people. I’m fine with that. I like my photos. That’s cool enough for me.) But I think that turning electronic boxes into musical instruments already has a lot of steampunk-cool attributes ripe for association with the things that are already in your music, which might help round-out the emotional experience of listening to your work.

Many thanks for the thoughtful response. Though I do get a tiny bit jealous when my readers provide counterpoint that’s actually MORE thoughtful than what I wrote originally. 😉

Funny you mentioned Dadaism — Only last week I was thinking “I need to add a touch of provocation to my music — something like Dadaism to sharpen my more surrealist tendencies.” And funny, too, that you mentioned the steampunk aesthetic of some electronic musical instruments — I’ve been lusting somewhat unhealthily over this modern version of the Ondes Martinot:

I thought it would be the perfect instrument to pair with the modular synth — thus satisfying my somewhat conflicting desires to craft simple and beautiful melodies, while floating them atop complex, room-emptying sonic chaos.